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I love Anthony Bourdain!!! His show is my #1 favorite show and if you haven't read his Kitchen Confidential, it is a MUST READ. (My fav. book too) I'm now reading A Cook's Tour. The man is intelligent, and his writing is witty, colorful, descriptive, and just all-around excellent. Support Tony, and let's get him onto Ron Paul.

I'm having trouble tracking down his email address... I figured it would be an easy "just go to his website" kind of thing, but his site doesn't have contact info, maybe he's been spammed too many times from people asking for recipes

Yeah he isn't libertarian. He is probably liberal, and snooty. Comes from New York doesn't he? I like his show, but there are some episodes where he and his hosts come off as pretty pretentious. Like the episode where he visits Vegas and rails against how "corporate" and "soulless" it is, and the episode where he visits this guy who makes chocolate sculptures. He just kept going on and on about how the chocolate sculpture guy is a genius sophisticate, anyone who disagrees is obviously the opposite. Its more vibes I pick up, he wouldn't act blatantly full of himself on television, but its definitely there. Old buildings in European countries, unanimous consent on socialized medicine = cultured. American owned fine dining, modern buildings, the polish of a well run business = soulless and "bourgeois". Although I can't fault him for clearly not being that much of a fan of the United States, and he undoubtedly runs in to many people who rail against the US in his travels.

Yeah, I guess he's libertarian "for a New Yorker." In other words, he's probably anti-war, pro drug-legalization (he's been known to partake, that's for sure), pro-illegal immigration (a LOT of the people who work in kitchens are illegals), and unhappy with D's and R's--so calls himself a libertarian.

Those who want liberty must organize as effectively as those who want tyranny. -- Iyad el Baghdadi

"Each of us must choose which course of action we should take: education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes. But let it not be said that we did nothing." - Ron Paul

"Paul said "the wave of the future" is a coalition of anti-authoritarian progressive Democrats and libertarian Republicans in Congress opposed to domestic surveillance, opposed to starting new wars and in favor of ending the so-called War on Drugs."

"Each of us must choose which course of action we should take: education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes. But let it not be said that we did nothing." - Ron Paul

"Paul said "the wave of the future" is a coalition of anti-authoritarian progressive Democrats and libertarian Republicans in Congress opposed to domestic surveillance, opposed to starting new wars and in favor of ending the so-called War on Drugs."

* Enforce Border Security – America should be guarding her own borders and enforcing her own laws instead of policing the world and implementing UN mandates.

* No Amnesty - The Obama Administration’s endorsement of so-called “Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, will only encourage more law-breaking.

* Abolish the Welfare State – Taxpayers cannot continue to pay the high costs to sustain this powerful incentive for illegal immigration. As Milton Friedman famously said, you can’t have open borders and a welfare state.

* End Birthright Citizenship – As long as illegal immigrants know their children born here will be granted U.S. citizenship, we’ll never be able to control our immigration problem.

* Enforce Border Security – America should be guarding her own borders and enforcing her own laws instead of policing the world and implementing UN mandates.

* No Amnesty - The Obama Administration’s endorsement of so-called “Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, will only encourage more law-breaking.

* Abolish the Welfare State – Taxpayers cannot continue to pay the high costs to sustain this powerful incentive for illegal immigration. As Milton Friedman famously said, you can’t have open borders and a welfare state.

* End Birthright Citizenship – As long as illegal immigrants know their children born here will be granted U.S. citizenship, we’ll never be able to control our immigration problem.

Mike Rowe wrote a great inadvertent eulogy regarding his death. Well worth the read...

"Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

On a hot night in 2005, after a long day of spelunking through the septic tanks of Wisconsin, I retired to my suite at the Motel 6, to wallow in the perks of my chosen profession.

First, there was the tepid shower, followed by another. Then, there was the tepid beer, followed by another. Then, I logged into the Dirty Jobs Mudroom, where I planned to chat with fans of my show while watching myself on television, (a narcissistic but mostly harmless habit that eventually got out of control and turned into this Facebook page.) But that’s another story.

On this particular evening, stretched out on a suspicious comforter held together with the DNA of previous guests, I stumbled across a smart-aleck on The Travel Channel eating fermented shark meat in Iceland, and telling his producer he’d be dead by morning. I had to laugh. Just a few hours earlier, I had been eating a fermented hoagie in an open sewer, and lodging a similar prediction with my own producer.

Naturally, I was intrigued by what appeared to be a kindred spirit, Forrest-Gumping his way around the world, pushing the bounds of non-fiction television. The show was called “No Reservations,” and no – I didn’t think it was better than Dirty Jobs. But I did think it was every bit as good, and the more I watched, the more I grew to appreciate this subversive chef’s naked contempt for all the fakery of traditional production. I loved the way he went out of his way be seen as a “traveler,” not a tourist. It reminded me of my own attempts to be seen as a “guest,” and not a host.

From that moment, I was a fan. I read his books, and enjoyed them all. But what I enjoyed even more was the way Tony pushed The Travel Channel into some very uncomfortable territory. It’s not that I think bad language and drinking on camera are cool or edgy; I don’t. But I loved the fact that Tony pushed the network to let the show evolve around his point of view, and his personality. In those days, that almost never happened. It’s still very rare, mostly because the shows are the property of the network, and the network almost always has an opinion about how their hosts should and shouldn’t behave. But Bourdain was his own man – a man on a mission to produce a show that was authentic to him. I admired that. I also admired the way he pushed back when his name and likeness were used to sell Cadillacs without his permission. https://bit.ly/2Jt0EWB He had integrity, and was unafraid to walk away from a steady gig when he believed he was in the right.

I think my favorite thing he ever did was an episode for Parts Unknown. Tony goes scuba diving for octopi in Sicily, with the help of a local producer. But when there are no octopi to be found on the sea floor, the producer starts dropping them off the side of the boat.

Imagine the scene. Bourdain is twenty feet down with his cameraman, when store-bought, frozen octopi begin to float slowly by. It’s absurd, but precisely what a typical producer in my industry would do to do “salvage” a scene. Bourdain however, is appalled, and does the only sensible thing he can - he drinks through the rest of the episode, heavily. Later, in voiceover, reveals the botched attempt to fool the viewer by airing the raw footage. It's the most honest thing I’ve ever seen, in a genre that stages 95% of what it presents as real.

Full disclosure - I don’t know Tony well enough to eulogize him. We met a few times, here and there, shared a few drinks, and complemented each other on our respective careers. We disagreed on plenty, but we approached non-fiction television the same way. Tony looked askance at rehearsals, scripts, executive oversight, and most of all, second takes. And he used his platform to do more than entertain.

A few years ago, at an event in New York, we traded war stories over some better than average bourbon. I asked Tony about the warthog anus he ate in Namibia, and whether or not the subsequent antibiotics did the trick.

“Hard to know,” he said. “By then, I’d developed a kind of natural immunity. What about you? Still keeping the Hep-A at bay?”

“So far so good,” I said. “My problems these days are mostly with PETA.”

Tony laughed. “Don’t get me started. They’ve got a file on me the size of a phone book.”

We talked about the importance of showing people where their food comes from. He told me about the petition against CNN that arose when he removed the beating heart from a snake. I told him about the boycott against Discovery when I butchered a cow on camera. We talked about the difficulty of producing a truly authentic show with sponsors and advertisers and millions of viewers with competing agendas, and how grateful he was for the chance to deliver the show he wanted to deliver. I told him about the night I saw him choking down the fermented shark in Iceland, back in 2005, and asked him if he ever imagined a scene like that would lead to a Peabody Award. He told me that awards were nice, but never part of the plan.

“I was mostly trying to amuse myself,” he said. “I just wanted to do a show that I could be proud of.”

Yesterday, when I heard he’d hung himself, I thought about the first time I saw "No Reservations," while I was stretched out on that suspicious comforter in a Motel 6 outside Madison. I just found the clip on You Tube, and watched it again - this time from the comfort of a leather sofa, where the only DNA present was my own. I couldn’t help but notice the title of the episode - “Hello Darkness, My Old Friend.”

Old friends, it seems, have a way of reuniting.
Tragically, in this case.

My sympathies to his loved ones, and to his millions of fans trying to make sense of the inexplicable. His was a truly unique voice, and I'll be among those who miss it.

Here's what Mike was referring to about the Cadillac ad that, unbeknownst to Bourdain, used his likeness in it's ads and lead to him ending his show.

"FIGHTING MAD
“I don’t know karate—but I know ka-razy” –James Brown

For the past eight years, I’ve been making a television show called NO RESERVATIONS. I wrote it. I executive produced it. And I appeared in it. My partners and I always tried hard to make it good.

During that time, I understood the way the world works. Television programs are paid for by television networks—who make their money selling advertising. And it would be ridiculous to hope or expect that I could ever have control over who buys commercial time in the breaks between segments. But my name and image are my own. My name, arguably, might not mean that much—and my face may not be pretty, but they’re mine.

In the brave new world we live in these days, fewer and fewer people watch their favorite television programs in their scheduled time periods. They DVR them, they record them, they download them on-line. People tend, under such circumstances, to skip—or speed through—commercials. For this reason, there’s pressure from networks to “integrate” products into the body of the actual shows whenever possible: to slip images of brands right into the action, or to transitions into commercials in such a way as to make the viewer think that it’s still the show they’re watching.

I’m aware of these pressures and have been, as a result, very very careful about resisting them. A while back, I agreed to use a credit card on a limited number of episodes of my show. The network made money off the deal. It helped assure me and my production company the budget we wanted. And I got paid. My fans were not pleased, however. Not at all. The backlash was considerable and angry. People felt betrayed. As a result, I became even more careful and even more reluctant to do them.

Fortunately, I had made sure, in my agreement with Travel Channel, to include very specific language about this kind of thing. We had both agreed to terms where my name or image was never to be used to either endorse, or imply use of a product without my specific agreement. It was clearly expressed in writing, clearly understood and agreed to that I would not use or mention any products in my show and my name and image would not be used in connection with any products in return for anything of value or any other consideration without my specific agreement.

My inclination, I should point out has always been to do NO product integration of ANY kind. I do not have a merchandise line. I don’t sell knives or apparel. Though I have been approached to endorse various products from liquor to airlines to automobiles to pharmaceuticals dozens of times, I have managed to resist the temptation. Though not quite a virgin, I have tried to remain fairly pure. To the extent I am known, I think I am known as a person who expresses his opinion freely about things—and I was sensitive to the possibility that if I was seen taking money for saying nice things about a product, my comments and choices and opinions would become, understandably, suspect. Did I really like this particular beer I was seen drinking on the show? Or had I simply been paid to say so?

As described above, I took money from a credit card company once. Never to be repeated. And I drove a BMW once—for which I got the car that I drive today. That’s it. Any other brand—of beer, cars, whatever—that you saw me use on the show—I used because that was what I liked and thought appropriate or fun for the circumstances or setting at hand—or simply because they were what was available.

I like to think I’m a man of my word. If I tell you I’m going to meet you tomorrow at a movie theater to see a film at twelve o’ clock, I will be there. And I’ll be there early. I will expect the same of you. If I make an agreement—especially about something as personal as the use of my name and image, I expect that agreement will be honored. So it came as a shock and a disappointment to turn on the TV for the last two episodes of my show, and see that someone had taken footage that me and my creative team had shot for my show, cut it up and edited it together with scenes of a new Cadillac driving through the forest. Scenes of me, my face, and with my voice, were edited in such a way as to suggest that I might be driving that Cadillac. That, at least, I was very likely IN that Cadillac—and that if nothing else, I sure as $#@! was endorsing Cadillac as the vehicle of choice for my show. All this following seamlessly from the actual show so you were halfway through the damn thing before you even realized it was a commercial.

The network made a commercial, with me endorsing a product, and hadn’t even bothered to ask me. After the first airing of the commercial, I let the network know of my extreme displeasure. Fair warning one would think. They ran it again anyway.

I have no problem with Cadillac, by the way. A couple of people have come up to me after reading my enraged twitter rants on this subject and asked me what my problem is with them. No problem. With them.

I have had a long and mostly very happy relationship with Travel Channel over the last eight years. For almost all of that time, they were incredibly supportive of what me and my partners were doing—and of me personally. A number of different owners, a number of different administrations came and went. But in the last year or so things started to take a definite turn for the worse. There was the news that, unbeknownst to me, the network had decided to add THREE “special episodes “ comprised entirely of clips from previous shows to the final bunch of only seven. Had we not agreed to edit them ourselves, they were well on their way to doing the shows without our participation. Best I can tell, they are, unfortunately, well within their contractual rights to butcher our painstakingly shot and edited footage as they choose. It’s something of a creative signature of the new guard at Travel, best I can tell—to cynically and cheaply “repurpose” existing material to create additional “content”. In such circumstances, as some of my on air colleagues agree, no one wins. Presenters look exploitative and lazy. Fans feel used and misled. Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do about that.

But I CAN do something when my name and image (such as they are) are used to sell a product without my consent and in violation of prior specific and well crafted legal agreements. And I intend to.

It’s an inglorious way to go out—after 8 seasons of television programs of which I—and all the people who worked on them—are very proud. I miss the happy times at Travel, the first Big Cheese there, a Mr. Pat Younge, in particular, who really took a lot of chances on us. Who believed in us, understood us, appreciated the work we did and how much it meant to us. Who understood that keeping faith with our fans in the long run meant something more than short term profit.

I apologize to the guys on the production line at Cadillac, for finding the thing YOU make, and I have no doubt, are very proud of, in the middle of a rancorous disagreement.

I was—and remain—angry.

While this would seem to be a problem most people wouldn’t mind having; I can only ask how you’d feel if somebody was out there using your name for purposes of their own—without your knowledge. If they presented you as someone you are not, as holding opinions you don’t hold, and making money off those misrepresentations—however embarrassing to you.

All of us on the show would have preferred to go out on a high note—and we tried to do that as best we could, turning in a strong, final season that we are very proud of. We wanted to go leaving a lot of great shows—and nothing but good memories and good will behind.

Today I was told that Bourdain announced he had enough on the Clintons to sock them away for the rest of their miserable lives. Anyone know whether this is true? If so, it would become very difficult to accept the suicide story.

Anyone?

ETA: Why would he have dirt on the Clintons? Is there something about him I don't know?

Last edited by osan; 06-13-2018 at 08:13 PM.

Through lives and lives shalt thou pay, O' king.

"It’s just interesting to note how constant government oppression can kill people’s fighting spirit." - Withur We